"Ni Féministes, Ni Soumises": Female identity in the banlieues

In March 2010, journalists Faïza Zerouala and Widad Kefti published an invited column in Le Monde entitled “Ni Féministes, Ni Soumises.” Then in their mid-20s and blogging for the Bondy Blog, they targeted the Republican feminism promoted by “Ni Putes, Ni Soumises,” the state-sponsored banlieue-based feminist organization. Over the last decade, new ways of understanding female identity in the banlieue have multiplied alongside and sometimes in reaction to the NPNS agenda, including expressions of an intersectional and postcolonial feminism in which questions of gender, race, and class converge. In the same timeframe, women's creative production has grown and diversified, holding at its center ways of being and doing as a female minority in the banlieue. This panel seeks to explore how women writing (fiction and non-fiction), filming and acting, and making music depuis la banlieue participate in this revisioning. What tropes and references have gained currency? How does their creative production differ from that of their male counterparts? To what degree is it possible to speak of their production in feminist terms?